Saturday, July 30, 2011

There Will Be Words

When I began this blog back in September of 2006, it followed a format of showing a picture or two, preceded by a blog post title and followed by a place-identifier caption. Then, frequently, a bit of discursive text that might or might not have had something to do with the pictures.

Somewhere along the line the text dropped away and the blog evolved into something that might owe a debt to the recurring “quote without comment” feature in The New Yorker magazine, with the picture standing in for the quote.

At least for a little while, I’m going to move back toward the original concept and include some writing with posts here. Partly this is a response to “popular demand”—from a minority of my handful of regular viewers—but also simply because there are some photography-related things I have a notion to write about.

So watch out, in the next post, well, in this one already, there will be words.

3 comments:

Rich Gift Of Lins said...

Hi Carl, I'm pleased that you will be adding some text. I started following your blog some time ago with interest. Some of your images I can very easily relate to and can read what it was that you probably reacted to at the time. Other's I find quite challenging which is most likely to do with my own visual literacy! I find myself wondering what it was that motivated you and/or your intent. Please don't read any criticism into my words because there isn't any and I just want to learn! It would be most interesting to find out more about "working pictures". Best Regards, Colin. (p.s. I think that the work on your website, especially "Twenty" is/are inspirational)

Carl Weese said...

Thank you, Colin. What I have in mind to write about is more general photographica than specific explication of what you see on WP, but a connection will underlie it all.

Thanks for the mention of the "Twenty" portfolio. It's been some time since I've done large format work and I really miss it. That is about to change though. I'm planning a relatively short expedition to add to my "American Drive-in Movie" project with a trip this fall that will line out to Michigan to get the several wonderful surviving theaters there, circle around to the Upper Peninsula, then pick up locations through Wisconsin, and finally zigzag a bit in Illinois and Indiana to hit venues I haven't gotten to before. The reason I bring this up, is that almost all of the pictures in the "Twenty" portfolio were made because I encountered the situations while out hunting DI theaters. Same for the "White Churches" portfolio. So maybe twenty will become twenty-five.

David said...

Words are good, but please keep the pictures coming. The main reasons I like "Working Pictures" is that it's photography, not "about" photography.

Taken together, as a years long series, the pictures here say things about you and about your style of photography that words just could not say.